Google has had its fair share of problems in China, and most of the time it was not difficult to sympathise with the company.

The Chinese government publicly lectured Google earlier this year for allowing pornographic content to appear in its search results and punished it with temporary suspension of two popular search features. But many observers and users saw this as a thinly veiled protectionist move favouring local rival Baidu, as just the same content could be found on its site.